"The ink is barely dry on AMD's Socket AM2 Phenom II launch, but Sunnyvale is making up for lost time when it comes to debuting new products. On Monday, February 9, the CPU manufacturer released a total of five new Phenom II-class processors, all of which are classified as Socket AM3 parts. Unlike Socket AM2 chips, which are only compatible with DDR2 memory, Socket AM3 CPUs can use either RAM standard and drop neatly into either motherboard. The backwards-compatibility of Socket AM3 chips should make them quite attractive to anyone upgrading an older Athlon 64 X2 or even a Phenom part; AMD's Phenom II (aka Deneb) offers a number of significant performance and thermal improvements over the ill-fated Phenom I. Remember that backward compatibility only goes one direction - AM2+ processors will not work in AM3 boards."

Just to correct you, AMD processors have had the memory controller integrated for ages, I think since the first 64 bit chip....

I know, but I was responding to his argument about socket 7, and for that systems the memory controller was on chipset.

Secondly, the AM3 socket has 938 pins, where as AM2/AM2+ has 940... so that arguement doesn't really stack up...

Infact, at toms hardware, they tried to put an AM2+ Phenom 2 chip into an AM3 mobo by breaking off the two offending pins... that didn't work, but putting the chip back in an AM2+ board minus the two pins still worked... weird..

Just thought I would clear that up.

I know that too. Just so you know, there are more diferences than the memory controller. More Hipertransport links, faster Hipertransport links, more pins for memory, less pins for other things, pins on a diferent place... the total amount of pins on the sockets doesn't mean that ddr3 needs the same amount of pins that ddr2 uses.

This AMD chips are backward compatible, that means you can place a AM3 chip on an AM2 board and it runs (without ddr3), but backward compatibility only works in one direction. There is no way an AM2 chip can work on an AM3 board.

Next time I'll try to remember to quote what i'm responding to, to make it clearer.